The new face of self-portraits
Students are constantly told they’d better get used to selling themselves, especially in the current recession. Their online image is a big part of the sell.
Alex Bellissimo, 18, posts photos of herself to Facebook every week. The fun-loving Ryerson Radio and Television Arts student has almost 1,000 images on the social-networking site, 66 of which have served as profile pictures—the self-portrait she chooses to show the world.
Bellissimo tries to look good. She chooses her photos carefully and edits them judiciously. She knows a lot can be riding on the photos.
“You can definitely showcase a lot of your stuff on Facebook,” Bellissimo adds. “Like I know a bunch of my friends who are in photography and stuff like that, they post all their pictures up. It’s really an inexpensive way to show other people your talent.”
Ryerson communications professor Isabel Pedersen, who studies visual rhetoric and mobile communication, says "Images are persuasive. They capture in seconds what it can take several paragraphs to achieve in writing."
“Online portraits, those so commonly found on Facebook, MySpace or myriad other social media sites are meant to be the visual version of the quick introduction. However, head and shoulder portrait shots do more than just introduce, they mimic a close face-to-face meeting in real life. They frame an intimate cameo about a person.
“Ultimately, they invite the viewer to make a snap personality judgment. And if a person projects the wrong personality in the portrait, all the resume content in the world won’t override that impression."
Self-portraiture has exploded online. There are over a million images tagged as self-portraits on Flickr.com, an online photo community of millions worldwide.
Ryerson image arts professor Wayne Pittendreigh says he sees these self-portraits as fitting into the genre of the “snapshot,” which has enjoyed a long photographic history.
“It is just more prolific now that it is so easy to capture your likeness with everything from a point-and-shoot camera to a cell phone, along with the fact that you can now upload them to the web for all to see,” says Pittendreigh.